


a heartbeat beneath your fingers

by Cxnfiscated



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Protective Lance (Voltron), Serious Injuries, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-29 04:56:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19822990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cxnfiscated/pseuds/Cxnfiscated
Summary: He is on the ground in the Blue Lion. Keith cradled to his chest. His arms and legs and torso drenched in blood.or:the one in which Keith gets hurt, Lance worries and it all goes well in the end.





	a heartbeat beneath your fingers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hootnooot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hootnooot/gifts).



> Hi, Hello!! This oneshot is a bday gift for my lovely friend and spouse [Khia!!](https://twitter.com/khiaakawaii) It's two weeks late, i'm so, so sorry. OTL  
> N E WAY, Khia I love you and I hope you enjoy it!!!  
> (and the rest of my readers too, of course!)

He is on the ground in the Blue Lion. Keith cradled to his chest. His arms and legs and torso drenched in blood. 

“This is actually quite ironic.” Keith has the nerve to shoot him a pained crooked smile. “Now the cradl-er is the  _ cradl-ee.” _

Lance scoffs but tightens his grip. “Are you seriously joking right now?” His voice rises and cracks at the end and Keith’s crooked grin vanishes. Lance almost begs for it to return. Its replacement is worse. Keith’s brows are pinched together in groans of pains that have been forced into a different shape. His eyes darken, his eyelids start to droop. 

Allura, who’s flying the lion, narrowly evades a plasma shot and the sudden manoeuvre makes Keith bite out a groan. Lance lets his fingers card through his hair, trying to offer at least some semblance of peace. The effort seems foolishly in vain. If there still was something like peace it wouldn’t be found while high-tailing it out of a lost battle, narrowly avoiding plasma shots and cradling the bleeding love of your life to your chest.

“Shh, it’ll be alright. We’re almost there,” Lance whispers into Keith’s ear and presses a kiss to his sweat-drenched forehead. It was then that he realised that Keith isn’t fighting the droop of his eyelids anymore. “Don’t you dare fall asleep on me now.” Lance tightens his grip on Keith’s hair and pulls him closer to his chest. “Don’t do this to me.”

“Just a bit Lance…’m tired,” Keith slurs out, half-lidded eyes pleading.

Desperation rises inside Lance’s chest. “No, please. Stay awake for me, Keith. Come on, stay awake for me.”

Lance still has the echo of the battle ringing inside his body, is still reeling from it. His hands shake as he tries to calm Keith, as he cups his cheeks and whispers his pleas into his hair. Frantic rushes of air.

“Lance, I’m tired.” Keith looks up at him, his eyes wide and glassy and pleading. Lance chest caves in on itself as panic seizes his ribcage and squeezes until hurts. 

“I know,” he forces a soothing tone into his voice, gently caresses Keith’s face and hopes he won’t notice his shaking hands. “Just hold on for a bit, love, alright? For me?”

Keith nods, the corners of his mouth pulling up in a pained attempt of a smile. “Everything for you.”

Getting Keith out of the lion after that is a feat nearly impossible. Your arms and legs are shaking beneath his weight as you hand him over to Hunk who carries him over into the medbay. You see him lying on the table as Coran looks for his cryopod suit. You can’t help but wonder what happens if this goes south, can’t help but imagine a world where you rise tomorrow morning and know that he won’t do the same. That he won’t the same ever again.

The thought alone scares you enough that you stop thinking for a while, your mind completely blank.

Even now that Lance’s hands are clean of blood and grime, when he is clothed and bathed and rested ─ as rested as you can be with your mind caught in a worrying frenzy ─ he can’t stop pacing up and down in front of the cryopod. 

His eyes retrace Keith’s features again and again. He can almost pretend that Keith’s just sleeping, pretend that Keith’s at ease and not dangling off the brink of death, that he isn’t looking death in the eye and refusing to follow.

Time passes and his eyes begin to burn. Exhaustion tries to lure him to bed but it was no match for his worry. 

Then a hiss cuts through the silence. Lance is on his feet in an instant. Three long steps later and he is right in front of the cryopod. The glass lifts. He is hit with a cold gush of air and then Keith is in his arms. He reflexively catches him, arms coming up to keep him from falling to the ground, stance widening for stability. 

“...Wha’?” Keith mumbles his slurred question into the nape of Lance’s neck, his words more breath than sound and Lance reaches up to card his hand through his hair. 

He steadies Keith and holds onto him even after they resolve the embrace. “What… What happened?” Keith frowns at Lance, his eyes still dropping, all of his movements in slow motion. 

“You…”Lance’s voice caught on to him like fish did on a hook and he faltered, “You got shot.” Lance reached out and pressed his palm against the spot where the blast shot had entered Keith’s body. The skin is knitted back together where it had been violently torn before. 

There is a heartbeat beneath his fingers, strong and regular and  _ alive. _

There is a heartbeat beneath his fingers, a sign that Keith made it.

There is a heartbeat beneath his fingers that Lance hasn’t lost him.

There is a heartbeat beneath his fingers, proof that Keith was  _ alive _ . 

“I… Oh,” Keith trails off and Lance watches him closely as the memories come back to him. “How’s the team?” 

“All fast asleep.” Lance wants to scream. Typical of Keith.  _ He _ is the one that had a bullet hole in his chest.  _ He  _ is the one that nearly bled out on the floor of the Blue Lion but  _ the team  _ was what he worried about. Classic.

“Are you okay?” Keith looks at him with a sudden sense of urgency, franticness already leaking into his facial expression. He lets his hands wander across Lance’s chest, seemingly searching for injury and exhales in relief when he doesn’t find any. Lance startles.

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine. No one really got hurt but you.” It sounds like a backhanded accusation and maybe it was, but Lance would blame the exhaustion and deal with it in the morning. 

“Should we head to bed?” Lance’s bones and cells ache when he makes moves to turn towards the door. Keith doesn’t answer but he grabs Lance’s hand and follows with him without protest as he steers them towards his own room. 

His room just like the Castle of Lions at this hour lies silent and dark. Lance carefully leads Keith past the laundry and other knick-knacks scattered across the floor of his room and to the edge of his bed. There he urges him to lie down.

“Just lie down alright? I’ll be back in just a second.”

Lance tiptoes over to the door and bolts it shut. Proof of his paranoia. Space has left its marks even if he doesn’t talk about them.

Then he joins Keith in bed. They curl around each other like liquid glass being moulded, rippling and shifting until they have the perfect shape. Keith hides his face Lance’s neck and Lance searches out his heartbeat with his fingertips. It’s right where he left it, right  _ how  _ he left it: strong and unrelenting. 

Now that they are together and the world is finally silent, both of them uncoil. They relax and let tension bleed away. But it doesn’t go away fully. No, parts of it still linger around in their muscles, refusing to leave.

Lance arranges them so that his head lies pillowed on Keith’s chest so that Keith’s heartbeat rings strong and steady in his ear. A constant reminder of  _ he is alive, he is alive, he is alive.  _ His knuckles, clutching fistfuls of the crypod suit fabric, turn a yellowy white as Lance body struggled to allow him rest.

“You scared me today. I thought I lost you.” Lance whispers the words into his sternum, indifferent to whether or not they will actually be received. 

“I’m sorry,” Keith rasps out, his voice made out of nothing but weak breath. 

This is the worst part of it all. That he could almost be torn to pieces and would still see the fault in himself. You can almost follow his trains of thought as they rush around behind his forehead, as they spiral downwards into doom.  _ Should have been faster, should have been a better leader, should have-, should have-, should have-  _ they’re an echo of what thoughts pass through your own mind whenever times get bleak.

“Don’t be.” Lance lifts his hands and puts on Keith’s cheek. It's warm, it carries life, it defeated death, “It’s not your fault, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I should have-”

_ “You didn’t do anything wrong.” _ Lance repeated with emphasis, “you saved my life.” His voice simmered down to a whisper as he the gravity of the events settles in. That blast would have taken him down, would have torn him to pieces. 

“It’s my job, I’m the Black Paladin now.”

He actually believes this. He builds his life around the fact that when it comes down to it you are more important than he is. That it’s right that way.

“No, it isn’t” Lance frowns and can’t keep his voice from rising. His words echo through the room, cut through the silence like a sword through bone. The cut is crooked, splintered and wrong. “Being the Black Paladin doesn’t make it okay for you to almost die! For you to put yourself in unnecessary danger just because you think it has to be that way. It doesn’t!”

Lance shoots up from where his head lays pillowed on Keith’s chest and looks down at him. Exhaustion slips off him like dirt washed away by water as anger and disbelief take its place. Keith sits up too, his movements still pained and slow. Lance reaches out to help him but he stubbornly bats his hands away. Lance bites back a curse. 

“Lance, look-”

“No, I won’t ‘look’!” Lance snapped, his hands coming up to make angry air quotes at Keith. “I will not let you put yourself in danger like that because of some misdirected desire to be a fucking martyr.”

He pushes his hands into his hair and grips two fistfuls to anchor himself. “Seeing you go down like this… I thought I  _ lost  _ you.” His voice breaks into two and shatters on it way out of his mouth. Lance hastily blinks away the tears in his eyes, hoping Keith won’t see them. He blinks in vain. Keith reaches out and cups his face with shaking hands. 

His palms are rough but his grip is tender enough to make something bloom inside your chest. There is hesitation resting inside his eyes and you want to kiss him until it doesn’t have a place there anymore. Until there are only you and him and the breaths you share.

“I can’t fight on, knowing that you’re not going to do everything needed to stay alive,” Lance lets his eyes fall shut as he whispered the words. He trusts Keith’s steady gip to keep hin together, to be stability when he can muster it up for himself. 

“Promise me you won’t do something like this again,” Lance opens his eyes and pinned Keith with a stare. He deliberately lets his voice harden, lets it carry the full weight of his words.

“I won’t promise you something I might not be able to keep.” Keith’s voice hardens until it matches Lance’s but his grip remains tender. Lance fights against the desire to melt. “But-” Keith takes a deep breath and Lance knows he will at least compromise. “I can promise you to try. I can promise you that I’ll make an effort and that has to be enough.”

It isn’t. We both know it. You are a spoiled, selfish creature. You want to lock him far away, where the war can’t touch him. Where no one would ever be able to hurt him. You want to wrap him up in silk and cotton and shield from all harm.

But that wouldn’t make him happy.

You two live on the front lines. Your ears accustomed to the sound of blast pelting armour, your veins used to the rush of adrenaline. Even now, after his chest had almost been torn apart, he itches to get back to the fight. He itches to make an impact. And you do, too.

Rest will not find you until the war has passed and evil has been defeated.

“Yes… Yes, I’ll take that,” he lets out a shaky exhale and tension bleeds away. The storm has passed.

“Can we lay back down now? And worry about all of this in the morning?” Keith asks. All exhaustion returns to his voice, reclaims its rightful place inside his body.

Lance nods and slowly rearranges them until they are just like they have been before. Keith on his back, Lance’s head pillowed on his chest Keith’s heartbeat strong in his ears.

“Keith?” Lance pushes himself up to his elbows and looks down at Keith.

“Yes, Lance?” Keith asks and promptly gets the rest of his breath stolen by Lance’s lips. Their kiss stretches and their world resumes its proper order. The stars slip back to where they are supposed to be, the world’s axis gets righted to its proper angle and the ground solidifies beneath their feet. Everything is just how it’s supposed to be.

Sleep claims you soon thereafter. You slip down and down and down until your worries can’t reach you anymore. Blissful unconsciousness wraps its silken arms around you and keeps harsh realities at bay.

You’ll have this small moment of bliss before reality resumes its place, before you have to take up your armour and begin fighting a new. But however daunting that may be, you will manage, you will reign victorious, hand in hand. Just like it’s supposed to be.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> you made it!!  
> tell me if you liked it (or not). if you like this and would like to check out some of my other writing,  
> -[plant a seed (we'll make it grow)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18794467): post s8, canon divergent, slowburn klance  
> and  
> -[And Yet, The Sun Will Rise Again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15206018/chapters/35268089): multi-chaptered dystopian AU, with everyone being a badass and also slowburn klance  
> -[to tear down a mountain of gold:](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19357090/chapters/46052932) multi-chaptered; casino heist AU with Klance, Romellura and Adashi and some good, good pining
> 
> are a good place to start!!  
> see y'all soon, byeee!!


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